The Promise Page 22

  Another promise.

  Feeling that, it hit me that I found myself—me, Francesca Concetti, having lived thirty-four years with not a lot of great, fleeting moments of happiness, and never much to look forward to—standing in the kitchen of a pizzeria in the curve of the arm of a handsome, good, decent man, living a life full of promise.

  The promise of Benny.

  So I pressed closer, held on tighter, and took in a deep breath, letting the goodness in the air get right in there so it could settle in sweet.

  And when I did, Ben tucked me even closer, held on, and stirred the sauce.

  * * * * *

  I should have held on tighter.

  I should have let that sweet settle deeper.

  I didn’t.

  Chapter Ten

  Come Back to Me

  I felt arms tighten on me and the haze of sleep lifted, slightly.

  When it did, I felt my body pressed snug against the hard frame of Benny’s, the warmth of our cocoon of covers, and the safety both created.

  I tilted my head back, opening my eyes, and I saw Benny.

  Half asleep, my belly still did a dip.

  As always.

  “Hey,” he whispered, his morning voice that beautiful mixture of deep, easy, and gruff.

  “Hey,” I replied.

  “How you feelin’?” he asked.

  “Good,” I answered.

  He lifted his head and buried his face in my neck, where he asked, “No, baby, how you feelin’?”

  At first, still in the haze of sleep, I didn’t get it.

  Then the way Benny’s hands were moving over the material of my nightgown on my back hit me. That wasn’t a lazy first-thing-in-the-morning caress.

  It was something else entirely.

  And if that didn’t do it, Ben gliding his tongue the length of my neck to the back of my ear, causing a shiver to glide over my skin, would have done it.

  And if that didn’t do it, Ben shoving his knee between my legs, forcing me to hook my leg over his thigh, would have done it.

  Suddenly, a germ of weirdness attached tight, making my stomach clutch and panic grip me because I knew what he wanted. I knew he was done waiting. I knew it was time.

  But I’d had one lover and it had been a long time. I wanted Ben to have what he wanted the way he wanted, but most of all, I wanted him to love it when he got it.

  Not to mention everything was riding on this.

  Everything.

  Just as suddenly as the panic clutched my belly, when his hand slid over my ass at the same time his teeth nipped the skin at the back of my ear, it released and the shiver took hold, making me tremble in his arms.

  “Frankie?” he prompted in my ear.

  I turned my head and drew in his scent before I brushed my lips against his neck and whispered, “I’m feelin’ good, baby.”

  Ben ran his nose along my jaw as he dipped his hand under the hem of my nightie and I felt the warmth of it, skin against skin, at the hollow of my back.

  His eyes caught mine. “Got an idea about how I can make the next few minutes real fuckin’ great, honey.”

  I hoped it took longer than a few minutes, though I didn’t share this.

  I said, “Let’s see what they can bring.”

  I saw his eyes smile.

  Then mine were closed because his head slanted and he was kissing me.

  It was like being back against the wall in my apartment, all hands, mouths, tongue, and need, except I was lying on Benny’s bed pressed tight to him, which was a whole lot better.

  But as he took from my mouth, he also pushed his hips into mine. I felt something even better and I wanted it even more.

  So I slid my hands down his tee, under, up, and in, taking his warmth and strength in through my fingers.

  It felt good, good enough to push my hips against his and he liked that. He liked it a whole lot. I knew it when he growled into my mouth, pushed his hips into mine, and rolled me so I was on my back and he was on me.

  And even better.

  “Please, fuck, tell me you can take that,” he rumbled against my lips.

  “Oh yeah,” I breathed against his.

  That was all he needed. His mouth took mine and this kiss wasn’t a replay of the one against the wall. It was deeper, hotter, searing.

  God, Benny could kiss.

  He would prove he could do other things too when his hand slid up my side, in, and he palmed my breast.

  My clit pulsed, my back arched, and I broke the kiss to whisper, “Benny.”

  He didn’t reply. He curled his fingers into the cup of the nightgown and pulled it down, then he palmed my naked breast and the difference was a nuance, but that nuance was astounding.

  “Benny.” My whisper this time was sharper.

  My stomach dropped when Ben slid partially off me, and I opened my eyes to watch his head bend just as his fingers closed around my nipple, rolled, then pulled.

  A mew slid up my throat as I felt wet gather between my legs, those legs tangling as best I could get them with Benny’s, and his gaze cut back to my face.

  At the look on his, his eyes saturated with hungry heat, I held my breath.

  He again rolled, then pulled my nipple and my breath came out of me in a soft gust.

  He did it again, my eyes went hooded and my hips surged up.

  He did it again and I started panting.

  “Jesus, baby, am I gonna make you come just teasin’ your tit?” he murmured, his voice mildly disbelieving, mildly awed, and totally turned on.

  I tried to open my eyes but was not very successful.

  Luckily, I was more successful in pulling my hands out of his shirt, then sliding them up his back and into his hair. I put pressure on and learned Ben didn’t need words.

  I knew it when his mouth touched mine, where he said, “All right, Frankie, anything you need.”

  Oh, I needed it all right, and Benny was as good as his word because he immediately trailed his mouth down my neck, my chest, it closed over my nipple, and he drew it in.

  Deep.

  A moan slid out of my throat, my fingers tightened against his scalp, and he drew deeper. Then he rolled my nipple with his tongue, before he muttered against it, “Fuck yeah,” then down went the other cup of my nightgown and Benny moved to it.

  I was arching into him, winding my leg around his thigh, clutching my fingers in his thick hair, my stomach muscles tightening with anticipatory glee as his hand drifted over it, his destination one I wanted him to get to, and fast, when we both froze solid as we heard Theresa shouting from downstairs, “Benny! Frankie! You here?”

  I didn’t move a muscle, but Ben did. Lifting his head and twisting his neck, he aimed his gaze at the door. I didn’t have a full view of his face, not even close, but what I saw of it was the heat of desire battling with the heat of fury.

  “Ben! Francesca! Are you here?” Theresa shouted from closer. She had to be on the stairs.

  That was when Ben moved.

  Yanking up the cups of my nightgown while grinding out, “You gotta be fuckin’ shittin’ me,” he looked to me and clipped, “Do not move.” After that, he rolled from the bed, found his feet, and prowled out the door, slamming it behind him.

  I lay in the bed, still frozen, staring at the closed door.

  I heard Ben bite out, “Jesus, Ma, seriously?” and it bolted through me. Vicious. Hateful. Destructive.

  Panic. Desperation.

  Sheer terror.

  It was irrational. I knew it. But even knowing it, I was powerless to beat it.

  It forced me to roll off the bed, run to the closet, and pull out one of the four suitcases I had at Benny’s.

  I then ran to the bathroom. Hearing the murmurs but not listening, I opened the suitcase on the floor and took everything that was mine that I could see. I dumped it in, not even looking if it made it where it was supposed to go.

  I opened the drawer Benny gave me and emptied it.

  I
then dashed to the shower and threw open the door, stepping in. I accidentally grabbed Ben’s shampoo and instantly thrust it back in the recessed shelf, as if touching it burned me.

  I snatched up my shampoo, my conditioner, then turned and went completely still when the bathroom I’d been using for over a week came into my consciousness with a clarity that was frightening.

  His house was old. Old enough I knew that bathroom as new.

  I also knew that Ben was not the kind of man who hired people to put in his bathroom.

  He did it.

  And he did it with a variety of things on his mind.

  Big shower cubicle, big enough for two, all glass except the tiled walls. They were a white matte that was very attractive but not with a bent to personal taste. They were the kind of tile a number of people would like having.

  Resale.

  Resale in preparation for trading up, going bigger, building a home for your growing family.

  My breath went ragged.

  Separate tub, big, deep, oval, with just this side of an extravagant faucet with a handheld shower attachment sitting on top.

  The kind of tub a woman who liked to take baths could fill with bubbles and sink into to melt away the cares of the day.

  Ben didn’t take baths. No way. I didn’t know this as fact from experience, just as I knew it as fact.

  Double basin. Two medicine cabinets. Room between the sinks so you’d never get crowded. Full, well-made cabinets underneath. Plenty of space for makeup, toiletries, first aid supplies, ibuprofen—whatever you needed, but far more space than a man would need.

  Shelves built into the wall so you could display nice towels, if you wanted. Or put bathroom-style knickknacks, if that was your thing.

  It wasn’t Benny’s thing. Towels that could use replacing were shoved in with only a passing try at folding them. Nothing else.

  He’d put in that bathroom for the woman he would find to put into that house.

  And he’d put in that bathroom with a mind to the buyers who would eventually take that house off his hands when the rest of the bedrooms were filled with babies.

  Benny Bianchi didn’t do minute by minute.

  Benny Bianchi had it all planned.

  I came unstuck and, in a panic, moved out of the shower when I heard Benny say in the bedroom, “Had a word. Ma’s…Frankie?”

  I said nothing. I dumped the bottles in the suitcase and they made a thud.

  “Babe, she’s gone and she won’t…”

  The words were closer and I knew why. I also knew why he trailed off.

  Because he was in the doorway.

  “Frankie, what the fuck?”

  “I gotta go,” I mumbled, bending double, ass in the air, fingers curling around the edge of my suitcase to drag it out of the room.

  I felt hands curl around my hips and I snapped upright, whirling and tripping when I took two steps back.

  My eyes hit Ben’s face and it was no less expressive than always. Concern. Confusion.

  “Careful, baby,” he said softly.

  “I gotta go,” I replied.

  “Something happened,” he noted, his voice still soft. Soft, deep, and easy.

  Killing me.

  “I gotta go.”

  “What happened, honey?”

  “I gotta go.”

  “What happened, Frankie?”

  Everything I was holding together for the last nine days, the last seven years, the last thirty-four, came flying apart. I leaned in and shrieked, “I gotta go, Benny!”

  He flinched at my tone but didn’t move, and his voice was no less soft when he said, “Talk to me, tesorina.”

  “I can’t do this,” I declared.

  “Why?” he asked carefully.

  “I don’t wanna lose you.”

  More confusion slid through his features. He glanced back into the bedroom, eyes aimed at his bed, then he looked to me.

  “How does what we were doin’ translate to you losin’ me?”

  I ignored that question and started babbling. “I lost you. I lost Vinnie and I did something stupid and I lost you. I can’t lose you again. Not you. Not Theresa. Not Vinnie Senior. Not Manny. I can’t do this because I can’t lose you.”

  “Honey, we’re not goin’ anywhere.”

  “You could,” I returned.

  “We’re not,” he shot back.

  “You could, though,” I snapped. “This could go bad.” I lifted a hand and jerked it back and forth with agitation, indicating him and me. “This could go bad and I’d lose you all again.”

  “It’s not gonna go bad, Frankie.”

  “Promise?”

  It wasn’t a plea.

  It was a dare.

  And Benny was too good. Too honest. Too decent. Too awesome to make a promise he couldn’t keep.

  But he was also too Benny, so he was gentle and cautious when he replied slowly, “I can’t tell the future, baby.”

  I shook my head in short frantic shakes. “No. You can’t. I can’t either. And I can’t take the risk. I got shot and that was good. It was good, Benny,” I repeated when his face grew dark. “It brought all of you back to me. And I know what you want. It burns, it kills, because I like what you want. I want to give it to you. I want to have it for me. But I can’t risk losing more. We have to go back to the way we were before. You can’t promise me this won’t go bad, but you can promise me we can keep that kind of good.”

  “The way we were before?” he asked.

  “You, me, friends, family.”

  I felt it slice clean into my heart, the new look on his face when he whispered, “You wanna be friends?”

  But I didn’t delay in whispering back, this time definitely a plea, “Please give me that, Benny.”

  He studied me for a moment, his expression beyond unhappy, and I let him, my chest rising and falling rapidly, my bleeding heart still finding a way to beat hard.

  Then he said, “There’s somethin’ not right here, Frankie, and we gotta get to the bottom of that.”

  He was right.

  And that was not happening.

  “Benny—” I started, but he cut me off.

  “If you can’t do that yourself, you gotta let me in there so I can dig whatever is eatin’ at you out of you, baby.”

  “I’m falling in love with you.”

  Everything went still.

  Silent and still.

  Benny. Me. The air around us.

  Dead still.

  Then Ben wasn’t still. His expression changed again and he gave me beauty—pure, undiluted beauty—as his face warmed, his eyes went sweet, and he took a step toward me.

  My hand shot up and I shouted, “Don’t come near me!”

  “Baby, you lost a man and you—”

  “No!” I yelled. “You think you understand but you don’t. It isn’t about losing Vinnie. It isn’t about me not bein’ strong enough to try again. It’s about you. It’s about the man who would come over to my house and shoot the shit with me, teasin’ me and makin’ me laugh while he ate my Christmas cookies. It’s about findin’ you and snuggling close for a Christmas picture, feelin’ warm and safe, family all around me. This could be good, what we could have—amazing, awesome, the best. And it could go bad. And then all that’s gone for me. You’re all I have. You’re all I ever had. And when I say that, I mean you and I mean your family.”

  “You gotta have it in you to try,” he returned.

  I shook my head. “Don’t you get it, Ben? I don’t have anything in me.”

  His look turned cautious when he said quietly, “I don’t get that, honey.”

  “If you don’t, you haven’t been paying very close attention.”

  His back shot straight. “There’s a lot to you, Francesca.”

  “There’s nothing to me, Benny.”

  He held my eyes, a firmness entering his jaw that was more than a little scary, and he said slowly, “You are very wrong.”

  “Yeah?” I fired b
ack. “You think that? Okay, then what happens when the day comes you find out I’m right?”

  He continued to hold my eyes, staring into them with a focus that felt like he was unraveling me. Then he took a visible breath, lifted his hand, schooled his features, and urged, “We need to calm down and talk about this somewhere not in the bathroom.”

  “I need to go.”

  “That’s the last thing you need.”

  On his words, it happened, so I guess he did unravel me.

  Tears hit my eyes so fast, I had no hope of choking them back.

  But they were the silent ones. The ones that said it all without a lot of sobbing and moaning. The ones that came from that well you held deep and only came out when the something you were crying about meant everything.

  “I want you always to think the way you think about me now, Benny,” I told him quietly.

  “Why would you ever think I’d think differently, honey?” he asked me, also quietly.

  “Because I’m me.”

  “Baby, we need to get outta this fuckin’ bathroom and—”

  He shut up when I begged, “Please let me go.”

  “You cannot seriously be askin’ me to do that.”

  “Please, Ben, let me go.”

  “And you cannot seriously think I’m gonna say yes.”

  The tears kept coming, but I said nothing.

  Ben did. “Come here, Frankie.”

  God.

  Benny.

  The tears came faster.

  “Baby, come here.”

  “I want you to have the woman who deserves this bathroom, Benny.”

  At my words, something hit him. His look turned ravaged and it was difficult to witness as he whispered, “Jesus, come here.”

  “I want you to have what you deserve, honey, and it’s not me.”

  “Fuck it, I’m—” he gritted out as he made a move to me.

  I took another step back, jerked my hand at him, and shook my head. “I’m leaving, Benny. And, honest to God, I’ll fight you if you don’t let me.”

  He stopped dead and looked into my eyes.

  I felt the last tear fall as I held his gaze.

  We stared at each other a long time.

  Benny broke it.

  “Don’t do this to us.”

  “I do, don’t hate me.”